Digital tattoos, mind-reading headphones: The shape of things to come?

By Arion McNicoll, for CNN

Updated 7:04 AM ET, Thu May 16, 2013

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Photos:Tomorrow's world: designs that will define our future

Technology of tomorrow – Most people feel anxious when their smartphone is out of arm's reach. But what if it was actually on your arm, woven into the very fabric of your sweater? Sportswear designers Under Armour are already on the case. They recently unveiled their touchscreen t-shirt concept, Armour39, which measures your athletic performance.

It's just one recent example of how design, technology and science are coming together to form a new generation of consumer products that look set to shape the future.

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Photos:Tomorrow's world: designs that will define our future

The Biostamp tattoo – Marcus Fairs, editor-in-chief of design magazine Dezeen, says that wearable technology will be a defining feature of future design. Fairs points to the likes of MC10, whose founder Professor John Rogers designed the stretchable circuit, and whose mission statement is to "extend human capabilities by making high-performance electronics virtually invisible, conformal, and wearable".

The Biostamp is a digital temporary tattoo that stretches and twists seamlessly with our bodies to monitor our health.

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Photos:Tomorrow's world: designs that will define our future

Vuzix Smart Glasses – While augmented reality devices such as Google Glass may for now be the preserve of middle-aged men from Silicon Valley, Fairs is convinced this sort of technology will be the norm in years to come.

Among Google's early competitors is the Vuzix smart glasses. Vuzix M100, which won the award for "Best of Innovations" in the design and engineering category at CES 2013, sync with apps on your smartphone and display them before your eyes.

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Shenu: Hydrolemic System – One step on from wearable technology is technology concealed inside the body altogether. In this way, Tokyo designers Takram have devised a solution to a future where drinking water is scarce. The Shenu: Hydrolemic System includes inserts for your nasal cavity to preserve water lost through breathing, a urine condenser and a radiating collar to lower body temperature and abate perspiration.

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The Cubify CubeX Duo – The emergence of sophisticated 3D-printing tools is also likely to shape consumer technology in unexpected ways, says Design Museum curator Deyan Sudjic. While domestic 3D printers are largely "just making combs and shoehorns" for now, Sudjic says that in the future we will be using them to manufacture much more complex devices.

The CubeX Duo, which won "Best Emerging Tech" at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) this year, is one of the more accessible 3D printers around, designed to be used at home by the average consumer.

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The FARO Focus3D – As 3D printing advances, so too will our ability to produce accurate 3D digital models. For those of you whose skills are lacking in the digital design department, the FARO Focus3D is a high-speed laser scanner that can create three dimensional digital models of existing objects, meaning that we can produce exact measurable copies of whatever we want.

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Fitbit Flex – Industrial designer Ross Lovegrove says that the best future designs will be a marriage of science, health and manufacturing, the likes of which we are beginning to see with relatively low-cost and stylish health monitoring devices.

Award-winning company Fitbit specializes in products to aid fitness, in particular the Fitbit Flex, a wireless-enabled wearable tracking device that measures your daily movements. Lights on the device indicate how you are stacking up against your personal goals.

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Nike Flyknits – Lovegrove says that the outwardly unassuming Nike Flyknit running shoes are also an indication of the shape of things to come in terms of the design thinking that went into building.

"The way they are woven. They put strength and structure where it is required. There are no aglets so they only need to be constructed with one material," he says.

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Nest Thermostat – The Nest thermostat is another device that brings together elegant design with super-smart technology. It has the ability to remember, to learn about your lifestyle and adjust the temperature of your environment accordingly. Designed by former king of the iPod Tony Fadell, the thermostat turns down while you are away and can be controlled remotely via your smartphone. It looks cool too.

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Mico Headphones – Of course the next step from learning about your lifestyle is actually feeling it. These headphones from Neurowear can read your subconscious mind. Yes, really. With a sensor that measures brainwaves they detect your mood and select music from your playlists to match it.

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The Chadwick Oven – But the future isn't all high-tech gadgetry. Some of the best innovations will still draw heavily on technology from the past. This is modern-day clay oven won the coveted D&AD award earlier this year. Designers have given a 21st century makeover to a product whose age-old function is still the best. By inserting a porous stone disc, it acts in the same way as a traditional wood fired oven.

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The Morph folding wheel – Another update of an ancient yet unbeatable design -- the wheel. Devised by Vitamins design, this is the first ever foldable wheelchair wheel, earning it this year's transport Design of the Year Award at London's Design Museum.

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Story highlights

CNN spoke to a host of design and technology experts to see what future holds

Key developments are in the field of wearable technology and 3D printing

Best design is a marriage of technology, science and manufacturing techniques

Forecasting future technology has never been easy. In the 1950s, scientists and technologists envisaged that by now the world would be free from disease, traversed by flying cars, and fueled by minerals from distant planets.

So, in what areas will the next major breakthroughs occur? Keeping in mind that prediction is more of an art than a science, CNN spoke to a host of design and technology experts -- from academics to magazine editors -- in search of what might well just be the shape of things to come.

The Editor

Marcus Fairs, editor of Dezeen

According to Marcus Fairs, editor-in-chief of influential design magazine Dezeen, the most high-impact developments over the next decade will be primarily in the areas of manufacturing and wearable technology.

"New digital design tech, 3D printing, robotics and the emerging field of 3D scanning, plus exponential leaps in manufacturing -- together, they are putting really powerful tools into the hands of individuals," he says.

"In the same way that laptops revolutionized personal computing two decades ago and cheap video editing software did for film, so too there will now be a revolution in manufacturing."

For Fairs, wearable technologies such as Google Glass point to another major evolution in design: the disappearance of objects altogether.

"The broader movement in design no longer asks 'is something a nice object?' but rather 'how can we get rid of this completely?'"

Deyan Sudjic, the director of the Design Museum in London, controversially selected a simple website as the winning entry in the 2013 design awards. The government site GOV.UK won, he said, because of its dramatic subjugation of form beneath function: "The overall winner this year is very interesting. It is apparently very simple, but it works beautifully. I think there is nothing more irritating than design that doesn't work."

For Sudjic, the future of design is about how well an object fulfills its function, not just its aesthetic qualities. At the same time, Sudjic believes there is a revival of interest in physical objects, noting that 2012 was the first year in two decades that saw a rise in vinyl record sales.

"I see design trying to get to grips with both the longing people have for the physical world and those other more slippery digital developments. People are still interested in tangible experience (...) You see that with the Makerbot, which is currently just making combs and shoehorns, but will soon be creating objects which are significantly more complicated."

"You have to understand materials at a deep scientific or nano level. Once you get to that level and understand ... you can reconstitute anything."

Lovegrove points to the Nike Flyknits -- an ultralight shoe with a knitted construction -- as an example of how future design will draw heavily on the latest thinking in science, health and manufacturing.

"The way they are industrialized, the way they are woven. They put strength and structure where it is required. There are no aglets so they only need to be constructed with one material. They are so lightweight you hardly feel them. They promote ergonomic health in the way they adjust posture."

Miles Pennington, head of Innovation Design Engineering at London's Royal College of Art

Professor Miles Pennington, Head of the Innovation Design Engineering programme at the Royal College of Art in London, thinks we are on the brink of huge technological change.

"Some people believe that there are no big leaps to come, but then people said in the 18th century that man could never travel more than 40 miles per-hour."

Pennington predicts that the next decades will bear witness to significant change.

"We are within 20 years of developing an artificial brain capable of matching our own ... Material developments in the nanotech field are starting to bear fruit ... (and so is) the field of synthetic biology, which can produce artificial muscle."

Is it possible to distinguish genuine technological contenders, from those that will only ever be the realm of science fiction? Perhaps not. But Pennington suggests he will be able to "answer that question in 50 years' time, when I have got my feet up, sipping a cup of my GM tea grown in the Antarctic, in front of a fire powered by synthetic bacteria and hovering on a comfort-pad-chair using reverse-magnetic forces whilst reading a copy of Isaac Asimov's latest novel (written by a quantum computer-cloned version of the man himself)."